Catwoman

We’re a bit later than we originally intended, but proud to present the first part of our C2E2 2015 panel recaps. But these aren’t your normal panel rundowns; these are chock full of audio from the panels, including quotes direct from Dan Slott, Brian Azzarello, Jimmy Palmiotti, Amanda Conner, Charles Soule, and a bunch of other creators!

We start by going through the Secret Wars: Last Days panel from Marvel, where the panel talks about the Last Days miniseries leading to Secret Wars for characters like Ms. Marvel, Black Widow, Silver Surfer, Punisher, Ant-Man and the Inhumans. While there’s not a lot in the way of revelations in this panel, there are one or two really interesting new tidbits… as well as the name a of supervillain that, by the end of the episode, will haunt your nightmares.

We then recap the New DC Universe panel, where the post-Convergence storylines of books including Harley Quinn, Starfire, Bizarro and Catwoman, as well as some details about the upcoming We Are Robin, are laid out. This was the panel where Dark Knight 3: The Master Race was made, and we have that audio (and our opinions) as well.

We plan to tape and release our recap episode about the Batman panel (where Scott Snyder talks openly about the Bat-Bunny) tomorrow or Friday, so stay tuned!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but we had some real time encounters with abject, stinking failure in 2012 that make me all the more grateful to move on and away from it. From the weird decision to fire and then almost immediately rehire Gail Simone, to the baffling continued employment of Greg Land, to the need for some high profile comics creators to make odd and unnecessary comments about Batman’s sexuality because they can’t seem to stop giving Playboy interviews while in the thrall of a mescaline bender, there was plenty to color the comics enjoyment experience last year. And, after all the dust settled from the complaints of former employees about creator rights and other assorted Twitter bitching, sometimes, just sometimes, there were the comics themselves that were the problem.

Here are my picks for the top five comic book disappointments of 2012, after the jump.

Have you read this month’s installment of Catwoman, yet? If you haven’t, don’t. There are a lot of other things you can do with that $2.99 instead of buy issue #0, by writer Ann Nocenti, unless you happen to be an obsessive collector of Adriana Melo’s artwork (which is the only bright point of the issue) or the items that carry the stench of failure, like dollar store condoms.

Selina Kyle has suffered mightily in the New 52 reboot at the hands of Judd Winick, suggesting that Barry Ween is his Jagged Little Pill. If Barry Ween was “You Oughta Know”, then Catwoman was Winick parading around naked exhorting “Thank you, silence”. Selina was a broken mess that owed more of her personality and actions to Batman slash fic than Frank Miller or Ed Brubaker. The announcement that Ann Nocenti was taking over the book at issue #0 was greeted with relief in this household. Surely, the woman who created Typhoid Mary for the Daredevil franchise could come up with a stronger, more bad ass take on Catwoman.

There is a convention going on in Toronto this weekend called Fan Expo Canada, which we were not able to attend since we are still paying off our attendance at San Diego Comic-Con, I have no valid passport, and because of that 1991 incident where the Montreal Police were forced to declare that particular location of Peel’s Pub “Unfit for human habitation” after five pitchers of Labatts and a plate of their poutine like it’s my fault that there was already a dude locked in the bathroom when the gravy and beer did what it does.

Anyhoo, there was a convention this weekend, and members of the DC Comics staff were there, and there was a pretty big announcement: writer Geoff Johns and current Batman: The Dark Knight artist David Finch will be collaborating on a new book: Justice League of America.

Editor’s Note:I acknowledge that these pictures suck. We’ll upgrade our cameras once we receive your subscription check. Oh, you don’t pay for this? Then fuck you and enjoy the pictures you got.

Last year we kind of wandered into the panel for Scott Snyder’s American Vampire, mostly to make sure we’d have a seat for the DC New 52 panel that followed directly afterwards. Don’t get me wrong, we were following American Vampire in kind of a general way, but I had fallen away; the initial hype around one of the early stories being written by Stephen King hadn’t been enough to keep me in the book except in a “flip through when I happened to see it on the shelf” way. The point is that last year, we were able to walk right into Snyder’s panel without having to wait around in a line.

That was 2011. This year, Snyder’s writing Batman, which has consistently been one of the best books of DC’s New 52 and the source of the first post-reboot DC crossover event. So this time around, for the Batman panel yesterday? Yeah, we waited in line.

The Batman panel covered all the Batman family books, from Batman to Red Hood And The Outlaws… meaning walking in Amanda and I steeled ourselves for exciting news running the gamut from Batman’s post-Owls Joker encounter to Starfire’s post-Red Hood stranger’s penis encounter. However, weird former Teen Titan sex revelations or no, Snyder started the panel off with a laugh: “Avengers Vs. X-Men, who wins? Batman.” I hate it when my comic writers are funnier than I am. But I digress.

Catwoman #3 is better than the first issue, but don’t get too excited about it, at least not yet. Better is, after all, a relative word; losing your job is better than, say, losing your foot, but that doesn’t make it good.

I’m gonna start with the positive things I found in this issue, because unfortunately there’s still plenty that’s disappointing, but we’re 48 hours from a long weekend in the United States, and only 24 hours from the biggest bar night of the year, so I’m feeling charitable.

As opposed to the first issue, which felt like a bunch of plot points strung together to fill enough pages to justify Catwoman fucking Batman, there is an actual story going on here, and it’s reasonable compelling. This comic is a revenge story, plain and simple, and although it is part of a larger story arc that started in the abysmal first issue, it has the feel of a one-and-done that’s refreshing.

We open with Catwoman captured and one of her closest confidants killed,and proceed at a rapid and exciting pace through her escape, hunting of the killer and taking revenge upon him, all in 20-something pages. It feels complete, which is all-too-rare in the New 52 books so far, and it ends with a cliffhanger vastly more satisfying than the first issue, where the only thing we were left wondering was how you get semen out of kevlar.

Yesterday was a big day on the DC Source blog, where they apparently decided to try and recapture that excitement and magic of the first month of the New 52 by showing off every… single… cover of every… single… comic that they’re releasing in February, the six month anniversary (or six month-aversary? “Anni” means “year”. So technically, anniversary isn’t the right – what’s that? No, you’ve been drinking! but I digress.

You can go straight to the source (get it?) for the full list, but here are some of the highlights. And lowlights:

It is Wednesday, and while we apologize that recent posting and this week’s scheduled podcast have suffered due to a brand-new chest cold (Amanda: Rob, stop pretending your alcoholism is virally related and fetch me more Robitussin), we must still announce the end of our broadcast day for the following excellent reasons:

Now that is a fucking New Comics Day take! We’ve got the final issue of Marvel’s Fear Itself (And associated books like Invincible Iron Man), a new Neal Adams’ Batman: Odyssey, Batman and Wonder Woman #2, Mark Millar’s Superior, and…

…yeah, we got weak and bought Catwoman #2 and Red Hood and The Outlaws #2. Because we’re considering a new feature called Circling The Glory Hole for books that sucked once, to give them a chance to, well, suck or be sucked.

But on the plus side, there is also a new X-Factor and Atomic Robo. Which, if they are found at any glory hole, it is because they need, demand and deserve a blowjob.

And also, we’ve got Justice League #2, which apparently ships every six or seven weeks, making DC’s New 52 more like the New 51.57, which is the kind of math rounding I like, because that makes my wang seven inches even.

Let’s start with a little in the way of full disclosure: we here at Crisis On Infinite Midlives are big fans of Warner Brothers’ / DC Comics animation. We could talk about our shelves full of Bruce Timm / Paul Dini Batman, Batman Beyond and Justice League DVDs, or our epic weekends screening all four seasons of Batman: The Animated Series while drinking a concoction we like to call Venom (Protip: the secret ingredients are Rebel Yell bourbon and Wild Cherry Jolt Cola – because you can’t find this shit in the States), but I won’t.

Because frankly, this picture of the Crisis On Infinite Midlives’ Home Office TV room art centerpiece is worth a thousand words… all of those words being “geek”.

Which is part why we are so excited about the impending release of WB Animation’s adaptation of Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One on October 11th on the video on demand service of your choice, and on October 18th on DVD and Blu-Ray. The other part is that, after five weeks of DC New 52 books were Batman lubes his Batpole with every trollop in Gotham City, it’s nice to see a Batman who saves pussy rather than trolling for it, as he does in this second released clip from the flick:

The Sudafed finally mixed with the Jack Daniels and made a mellow, Earth-friendly body-meth, which gave us enough energy to complete Episode 3 of the Crisis on Infinite Midlive’s Podcast: The Fistula of Justice!

Thrill to two drunk sick people as they talk about the impact of the New 52, DC Comics’ new Neilsen Survey (Which sadly didn’t include the obvious question: Orange nip slip: horrifying moment or the most horrifying moment?), the overriding post-Catwoman question: are superhero comics sexist (“What’s wrong with being sexist?” “Not sexy, sex… Jesus, you really are a monster, aren’t you?”), and our sleeper favorite books of the week!

And to answer some questions from the show that are enigmas, wrapped in riddles, covered in mucous:

The Crow said Don’t Look (Seriously: don’t look at this. It’s not safe for work. Or your appetite)!

Tell DC what you really think without having to spoon Dan DiDio (EDITOR’S NOTE: Rob just tried to take the survey and was told he wasn’t qualified. Probably because of his area code. Or because he said his penis had an area code of its own)!